Not Pecuniary
by Kaminari31Hiroki
Summary: A few years into the future, Takao has a band made up of the Shuutoku team members, except for Midorima, who is their manager. A lot of things have happened since high school, but a lot of them remained unspoken for the fear of ruining the friendship they've managed to preserve. Could these secrets lead the band, and their friendships, to self destruction?


**DISCLAIMER: I own none of these characters. They belong to Fujimaki Tadatoshi!**

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A crowd that chanted my name is all I ever wished for, and now it is at my grasp. My first concert in an actual center is today and my band and I can hardly contain ourselves. We had always performed in front of a crowd in small places, but today is the day our name will, possibly, be on the charts.

As we all warmed up our voices in the dressing room, our manager, and close friend, Midorima Shintaro— I call him Shin-chan— entered the room to address the way things will go. We were told to get along with the crowd to gain more fans among their friends, relatives, acquaintances, and such. I had to tell a few things about myself and introduce us as a band as well as the rest of the members, then act "sexy and cool" to raise our ratings among the majority that listen to our genre. Sexy, I assume, for the ladies and "Cool" for the guys so that they don't see me as an artist that only wants girls. I think it's fair; I would want the same thing if I weren't me. Lastly, he tells us, is for us to have fun.

We walk out of the room, onto backstage, and my friends and I gather and huddle in a circle. I look around in silence and nod before starting us off. "Alright guys, are you ready?" They all chant a "Yeah!" in unison. Everyone else is watching us with smiles in anticipation for what is about to begin. We all gather our instruments and wait on standby as we see the lights of the theater dim and laser lights move across the ceiling. The crowd cheers as this happens and Shin-chan gives us our cue to begin. Everyone walks out onto the stage and the crowd cheers louder with excitement. The band starts off and I begin to sing into the mic in front of me, enjoying the sensation of the adrenaline coursing through me.

Halfway through the concert, I introduce myself and my wonderful band to the fans. I start off with myself. "How are you all doing?" I loudly asked into my microphone, "My name is Takao Kazunari and I am the lead singer of this awesome group!" The drummer gives us a cool, steady, rock beat as I walk over to my friend playing the electric guitar and place my elbow on his shoulder. "Give a hand to my friend on the bass guitar, Otsubo Taisuke!" Right as I announce his name, he plays a few low notes on his guitar, that match with the beat of the drum, for the fans and they cheer. Otsubo fades away and the drums continue when I walk towards my friend playing them. "And give a shout out to my friend, Kimura Shinsuke!" then comes a crazy drum solo that is so fast his arms are a blur to us, and the crowd goes just as crazy. The beat finishes its high when I walk away towards the lead guitarist. "And finally, let me hear you scream for this fantastic friend and guitarist, Miyaji Kiyoshi!" As my voice trails off the last vowel of hi name, he plays a little rockin' solo on his electric guitar and the fans go wild. Then I introduce us as a whole. "As you all know, we are Rokuyo! And we all hope you have been enjoying this concert so far!" The crowd cheers once more as we start our next song, which begins with all of the instruments in a fast beat that is easy to rock out to. It takes a few measures for me to start singing, but within those few seconds I look out to the crowd and see some of them bobbing their heads to the music or jumping up and down. I begin to sing the lyrics and I see most of them sing along. In this moment, I realize that this is my calling; to play for all these people, for all these hearts and smiles that love our music so much.

After the concert, Shin-chan congratulated us on a great first concert. Even though he said we did great, we still needed to improve on some things. Me especially. "Takao, you need to interact with the fans more. They crave things like that." he says. C_rave. _As if he thinks I'm food. I also needed to be more energetic, to walk across the stage and jump on the right beats. I thought I was already doing that, but Shin-chan is the boss so I let him ramble on about all the other stuff we needed to work on.

When Shin-chan finished, I followed Miyaji into the dressing room since he told me to do so. He sat down in his chair— each of us had one— and stared at me. "What the hell was that?" he asked me. I didn't know what he was talking about, so I also sat in my chair and stared back at him. I replied, "I don't know what you mean, Miyaji."

"What I mean is, why is Midorima treating you like that? Aren't you two best friends or something?"

"He's always like that."

"So he insults you by criticizing all the things you did right? You did everything he said you didn't do! He should learn the meaning of 'Don't overdo it.'"

"Well... It's fine. I'll just listen to him. He could be right, you know? There's always room for improvement."

Miyaji sat up in his chair before speaking. "Alright, as long as your fine with it. Heh, I'm just glad he didn't say too much about me. I probably would have thrown something at him."

We both laughed at his remark. It was probably true! Ever since high school, Miyaji had always threatened to hit Shin-chan with a pineapple or run him over whenever Miyaji thought Shin-chan's actions were out of line. The both of us were still laughing then Kimura and Otsubo walked into the room, along with Shin-chan behind them. The trio looks at us oddly and Kimura asks, "What's wrong with you two?"

Miyaji and I bring in our lips to keep us from laughing any more than we already have but it fails when Miyaji orders him, "Kimura, pineapple!" The three near the door are still confused and don't release their gazes from us. We stop laughing and tell them that we were talking about the past; we left out the part about Shin-chan's actions a few minutes ago. Kimura and Otsubo slowly nod their heads in understanding and purse their lips in attempt to keep from smiling— I assume they thought of our high school days in that moment— but Shin-chan was not amused.

"Come on Midorima, don't be like that. It isn't a bad thing. You know you enjoyed those days." Says Miyaji, trying to ease Midorima's seemingly bad mood.

"I did enjoy those days." Answers Midorima.

_Did._ So he doesn't enjoy them anymore... I hope I'm wrong about this feeling. I wanted to ask him, but I feared ruining his mood even more so I kept silent about it and figured I would ask him on another day, probably when Cancers were in first place. Today, I think, they were third to last. He said he wasn't carrying his lucky item because he was so busy with today's events. I read that is was a stuffed bird plush. I don't even know where those are! So I stood up, walked over to him, and hugged him tight.

Shin-chan sighed and tried to push me off, but it was no use. "Takao, what are you doing..." he tiredly asked me.

"I'll be your lucky item for the day!" I answered.

The other three in the room chuckled and stifled their laughs by covering their mouths. Shin-chan hits my head with his left fist and pushes me off with his right hand and says, "You aren't a stuffed animal, and even if you were, there would be no point since the day is over in less than 2 hours."

I latched onto his left arm and said, "But I have the Hawk-Eye and I'm technically stuffed with organs. Who knows, maybe something good will happen to you within those 2 hours!"

Shin-chan pushed his glasses up before talking. "I highly doubt that, given the fact that I have to go to sleep when we get back."

Otsubo came to Shin-chan's right and patted his shoulder. "It's just one day of being ranked close to the bottom without your lucky item. I'm sure you'll be fine."

"Of course I'm fine." says Shin-chan.

Miyaji looks at his watch and gets up, announcing that it's time we leave.

We file to the tour bus and immediately fall asleep when we settle in, finding the most comfortable position in our seats. I sat next to Shin-chan because that's what we've always done. Some time during the trip, I awoke to the sound of sirens passing by, careful not to make any sudden movements since my head was resting on Shin-chan's shoulder. I blink a couple of times to completely regain my sight and glance to my left to see Shin-chan looking at a photo in his wallet. It was us, the Shuutoku High basketball team, in our club photo during Shin-chan's and my freshman year. I don't know why he would be looking at such a thing, but I figured it had to do with what happened earlier. As I slowly drift back to sleep, I hear him whisper something. "People who enjoy life are winners..." is what I think I hear. It kind of confused me as to why he would say such a thing. It wasn't his motto, but mine, which is a totally different philosophy than his "Man proposes, God disposes." I pondered it with what strength I had left. "Maybe that's why he didn't have his lucky item today." I thought before completely falling back asleep.

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For those of you who don't know what Rokuyo is, they are basically the Lucky and Unlucky days in Japan. You can google it if you want to go into specifics.

Also, Pecuniary means "Related to or having to do with money" so I'll leave the connection between the title and the story to your imagination because I believe Titles are meant to either sum up the entire story in a word or phrase or at least emphasize the main plot of the story...


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